There's a movie called "Child of Rage" which is about a little girl of age 5 or 6 who tried to murder her baby brother, told the viewers and other adults she wanted to kill her parents, tried to kill her dog, and killed a bird or two. She talked about this all very calmly and honestly.

After years of therapy, that woman now works to help other children with the attachment disorder she had and wouldn't hurt a fly.

Hitler never did anything like that in is youth and become possibly the most destructive person on Earth, if we're to go by numbers.

Meanwhile, lots of our ancestors were fine with slavery. We're not now...but we just so happen to pretty much all have more wealth than they did. Also, we have another important invention they didn't: The radio and television, and more means to let us see and understand the people who were being mistreated by old laws such as those that were related to segregation.

I think that our environment shapes us. I think that, had we been in similar circumstances, many of us would have what the voters for Hitler did. Give us someone charismatic...put us in a deep enough of an economic depression...and there you go. I think that mostly what protects us from that now is the stories we've spread about that that reminds us about how bad of thing that was, so I'm thinking we won't do it again, so long as those stories aren't forgotten.

So what's the purpose of vengeance? I would say much of the time there isn't one...but there can be: negative feedback - a warning "Do not do this again!" - the equivalent of an animal biting when its hair is pulled. You've got to stop the hair from being pulled, and sometimes provide a reminder of why not to pull the hair in the future through, say, a bite.

That said, vengeance harms other people, just like ourselves, who given different circumstances, likely wouldn't have engaged in the harms they engaged in anymore than we would...and the crime (and often the vengeance) harms us as well...so the better route by far is stopping the crime before it happens.

So, if that little girl hadn't gotten psychological help and had gone on to wreak having, who would be at fault for that? I'd say it'd be her parents' fault, primarily, for not getting her psychological help...but perhaps there was no help available. Then whose fault would that be?

Free will is a tricky thing. I would argue we have some control over our actions through being able to roll around ideas in our minds and make decisions about them...but I'd say, at the same time, we're clockwork and destined to do what our environment and genetics deem us do...so some of the blame, in a sense, could be placed on the older woman, I'd say, but I'd say the most important source to place the blame on is nature.

Nature is our primary enemy: that mindless witch who made the bubonic plague, and decided that one of the better ways to solve the problem of that plague was to force husbands to choose between dying alongside their wives, or letting their wives along...and those quarantines were about the only effective way to deal with the plague during its height, that anyone knew about.

I would argue, therefore, that we live in a world ruled by a monster...but it's a dumb monster. It wants to hurt us, and it's incredibly powerful, but we're smarter than it is.

So, we can be like Anansi the Spider and Briar Rabbit and Coyote and be shrewd and tricky, and outsmart it, and as it follows us with great gnashing teeth, lumbering blindly about, we can dive through the tangle of thornbushes like Briar Fox to escape.

It's worth noting that, that blind monster designed most of our instincts though...just like those of the octopus. The octopus dies when it procreates, and I'd argue that it's entire procreative cycle could be described as a severe mental illness.

We're smarter than the octopus though. If that happened to us, we see Nature's attempt to trap us before falling for it. We'd have fallen for it before...but eventually...we'd all surgically remove the part of our brains that lead to our deaths after we procreate...which, in experiments, has been done to octopi, and they can go on to live after they procreate.

We're a lot like Briar Rabbit. We can know there are great big monsters coming after us, with great gnashing teeth: Briar Rabbit and Briar Bear...and as long as we know this, we can dive into that tangle of thornbushes to escape.

Or, to put things differently, save a five year old from beginning a sociopath through psychological therapy.